EDITOR’S NOTE: This is the fourth in a series counting down the area’s top 12 prep dynasties of the past 50 years.
Greatness is often forged out of frustration.
The Gordon Lee High School softball program today is recognized as one of Georgia’s best. Coach Dana Mull’s teams have won 11 state championships in 19 years — including a run of 10 in 11 years beginning in 2010 — and finished second six times.
Four of those runner-up seasons came in succession — and each of them in painful fashion to the same opponent. While frustrating at the time, Mull believes the lessons learned in that time helped fuel what followed.
“It was a period of frustration, but some of the players who helped us start the streak (of championships) were on those teams,” Mull said. “They got tired of finishing second, and they found ways to get over that hump and then we just took off.”
Mull, after a stellar prep career of her own at East Ridge and collegiately at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, became Gordon Lee’s coach in 2003. She took over from Clay Crowder, who started the team in 1998 and had the pieces in play to win right away.
The Lady Trojans did just that in 2004, going 25-10 and riding the stellar pitching from Sam Floyd to an upset of reigning Class A champion Brookstone.
However, it would be six years before title number two, a period that tested Mull and her players to the core.
Eagles Landing Christian Academy won four consecutive championships beginning in 2006, each at the expense of Gordon Lee in the final round of the state tournament and the first three coming in the most painful fashion. Each of those years the Lady Trojans won the winners-bracket final to reach the title round of the double-elimination tournament, where they needed just one win to clinch the title.
In 2006, after bad weather caused the final round to be moved from Columbus to a field adjacent to ELCA, Gordon Lee pitcher Kaity Holloway struck out 19 batters in game one, but she was matched by ELCA’s Hope Rush. An error that would have ended the game and given Gordon Lee the title led to two runs and the win for ELCA, which also won game two.
The next two years were similar as Gordon Lee had the edge before Rush and ELCA rallied to win twice on Saturday. In 2009, a new ELCA nemesis, future Michigan star Megan Betsa, shut out the Lady Trojans to relegate them to another second-place trophy.
“It’s no fun to be double-dipped,” Mull said of losing two Saturday games. “That next group that came in took it upon themselves to win it again because, at that point, we knew second place is no fun.”
What followed is one of the most dominant runs in GHSA fast-pitch history. Led by pitcher Brenna Nation and stars such as Sam Taylor, Anna Quinn, Kendall Johnson and Kalei Kimbrell, Gordon Lee went 38-0 in 2010, becoming the GHSA’s first fast-pitch team to fashion a perfect season.
The 2011 team had a 37-1 record and outscored teams at the state tournament in Columbus 33-1. Seven seniors helped lead the best two-year run in program history.
“I remember in 2010 that it was a little scary taking that into the championship,” Mull said of the perfect record. “We didn’t want to mess up the undefeated season, but we didn’t talk about it and they took care of business.
“I’ve had a lot of good teams, but those two lost one game in two years and we had several who went on to play in college.”
The next four titles were more difficult to secure. The program that was once double-dipped three years in a row did the double-dipping. They did the deed to Georgia Military College in 2012 and 2013 and again in 2016, sandwiched around a memorable rally for the title in 2015.
Having only one experienced pitcher that season, Emily Armour, the Lady Trojans lost their second game and had to win twice on Friday and three times on Saturday. As Armour pitched all but one inning, they did just that.
“That was incredible,” Mull recalled. “Emily was one of the best big-game pitchers we’ve had. She was like, give me the ball, and it was nice to be able to be able to do that and not have to worry.”
From Floyd to Holloway to Nation to Jonia Taylor to Kimbrell to Armour and Canaan Burnett, Emma Langston, Emma Minghini and current star Sydney Garrett, Mull has always been blessed with dominant pitching.
“One thing that keeps Gordon Lee dominant in softball is to have dominant pitching,” said Mull, whose last four title teams from 2017 to 2020 combined to win 129 games and did not lose a game in Columbus.
“We’ve been blessed to have one and sometimes two great pitchers and, believe me, you can’t win without them.”
And winning is something Mull knows plenty about.
Contact Lindsey Young at lyoung@timesfreepress.com.
READ MORE: DYNAMITE DOZEN PREP DYNASTIES
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No. 3: South Pittsburg football